Finally finished the game I mentioned here with just under 20 hours invested into it and got a few new achievements to boot (capture 35, lose 30,000 ships (
) , etc.). I used the ratings ala Toranth's suggestions after scouting out everything. I love the Mk IV Scout for its ability to get intel pretty much anywhere. I did leave Fog of War on for this, I had the Mk IV go on a walkabout to find out most of this intel.
P0s were planets I wanted to grab or had to to use their resources (i.e. Golems). I had taken most of them at this point but decided to get in there and finish the AIs off in what one considers a hurry for AI War.
P1s are all gone but they were somewhat desirable, not as much as P0s.
P3s are nebula I have not done yet. I was working on them but stopped to push to the end. I used raiders to take out Sentinel Posts and then would take my Champion (in low power mode) with Cloaker Starships to the planets I wasn't going to take to finish those scenarios off and then came back the same way.
P5s are either skippable or hackable planets. I did a lot of hacking this round.
P9s are planets I didn't want to grab for whatever reason, and related to that, P8s were planets I didn't want but had gate raided. In retrospect the one P8 that is otherwise completely surrounded I should have just taken out but was testing AI progress as well so let it sit.
P7s are the homeworlds. The one P6 was just a planet I left fallow after getting it's research to give me a buffer zone from the first AI homeworld.
The P7 at the bottom with ships still in it was of course the Bouncers Homeworld, I had already taken out the Shield Ninny's by this time. I used a big EMP on the IV to it's left and blazed past the defenses to hit the homeworld, it was a mean planet and not worth taking. I did save before the attack just in case that move flubbed but it went pretty well.
I had already purchased Harvester upgrades before it being mentioned here but went ahead and grabbed the military and economic stations and the warp jammers. I didn't get the logistic ones. They have some nice advantages but then prior to this game I've never spent research on the stations. I love the military 3s, put them on high pressure border systems, and the eco 3 ones are lovely for resources but I'm not too happy with the Warp Jammers. I knew they didn't provide a 'seal' on their borders but when I left not only a couple of alerted but previously raided systems open as well as two non-raided borders to influence the AI attacks but they still kept hitting warp jammers, I was a bit confused. I knew that if you left them with no gates nearby they could attack anywhere, which is why you try to influence where the waves arrive via selective gate raiding so why they would hit the WJ systems instead of the open ones was perplexing to me and forced me to layer on more defenses there than I had originally planned. Luckily after Counter-Attack Posts were added (and I remember when they had a 1-minute or so warning only!), I put at least some defenses everywhere, but having to add so many to the WJ systems kind of defeated the purpose of using them.
I only used 3 EMPs the whole time. I used to use more warheads but was trying to minimize the AI progress until I was in the end game phase. I was able to hit all the co-processors, capture all but one of the Spire Civilians, although eye bots killed one of them under a FF, hit all the data centers, and even used the superterminal briefly. I had to kill that last one fairly quickly since it was in the same system as a Spire archive and even with it under a FF I didn't want to risk losing it.
The AIP would have been exactly double what it shows here (1064), I was quite happy with my reduction this time as I did take a lot of systems, even with paring them down and pushing quickly at the end there. Not quite to IV, but pretty close had I not taken the spires and every single AIP reducer.
My bonus ship was the Vorticular Cutlass but I ended up with more bonus ships than I ever had before, partly from lots of hacking and selective conquering but also from playing on an 80 size galaxy where I usually play 60s.
Thanks for all the advice, I just started a new 6/6 game with the Space Tank as my bonus ship and the random AIs are Bouncer (again) and Tag-Teamer but I just started and so far I have grabbed Military 2 and 3 stations, Scout 2, and Engineer 2, not the harvesters like I used to always do. I've beaten the game before but I knew I was close to the edge of the abyss when starting to move the difficulty up, even 4-5 is a big difference I've found. Need to play tighter and more focused as the AI becomes less forgiving.
My defenses are similar to Kahuna's although I don't use the FFs on the turrets as much as I should it appears. I do use minefields to a lesser degree and have always found them very handy. My question to you Kahuna if you read this thread still is: I'm curious as to why you specifically indicate some engies outside the FF, but I am unsure as why this is specified? I normally hide all the engies and rebuilders under the domes but you obviously have a reason for that placement and it intrigues me.
On a side note, I'm really enjoying the hacking system.. I hacked 3 or 4 systems for research, several design backups (some I DLed, some I corrupted), fabricators, etc. I burned through most of my Hacking Progress as the game went on. It adds another wrinkle in the way it works backwards from our AIP so it requires a balancing act, which I love for games like this. Every decision should have weight and this makes you ponder what to take vs. what to hack.